


As The Dove Flies

by adamwhatareyouevendoing



Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Forgiveness, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 13:29:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20426768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adamwhatareyouevendoing/pseuds/adamwhatareyouevendoing
Summary: He is utterly unprepared for a smile to break onto her face, her eyes sparkling, as she says, “Stay here, with us.”When Allan runs out of road, Djaq is there to bring him home. Alternate ending to 2x13, where Allan stays with Djaq and Will in the Holy Land.





	As The Dove Flies

**Author's Note:**

> After rewatching again last week, this is what I always wanted to happen. Over ten years and still dreaming about what could have been!

There is a small, quiet cough from the other side of the screen, and Allan startles awake between one breath and the next, hand instinctively reaching for the sword no longer at his hip.

Djaq rounds the column, soft light spilling behind her. Her eyes are infinitely kind as she takes a seat next to him on the sandstone wall.

“I wanted to tell you myself,” she murmurs, curling her body towards him. “Will and I, we are not returning to England.”

The words hit him like an arrow through the air.

“Oh,” he says, a rush of breath into the silence between them, dropping his head back against the screen with a dull thud.

His heart aches to look at her, but his eyes cannot tear themselves away. She is robed in soft silk, the pale fabric shining in the early morning light. She looks happy, the smooth lines of her face free of worry now that she has shed her warrior’s skin.

This is Saffia, he thinks, the memory of the first time she told him her true name coming unbidden to his thoughts. The woman she was before war came to her country and tore her family and life apart.

It is the most radiant he has ever seen her, and once more she is slipping through his fingers, along with everything he ever wanted.

Money, power, land, a title—they all pale into insignificance now. He chose to turn his back on those things, chose instead to return to his friends, but he would not ever choose to leave her behind again.

Her—and Will. Two of the only people to find a way into his cynical, hardened heart and allow him hopes of a different future. Without them, there is no point in him returning to England either.

“Alrigh’ then,” he says, with an easy shrug, affecting an air of nonchalance. Cowardice has always been easier than courage. It will be better if she believes that it is of no consequence to him that she has chosen to remain here.

He watches carefully for a change in her expression, hating himself for the selfish surging hope that she might be crushed by his reaction, and yet he is utterly unprepared for a smile to break onto her face, her eyes sparkling, as she says, “Stay here, with us.”

He shakes his head, halfway between disbelief and absurd unthinking refusal. “No, you’re—you don’t need me,” he finds himself saying, the words torn from somewhere in him that still believes it. “I’ve seen you together, you and Will—you’re happy. I don’t belong here. I don’t deserve to.”

“You’re wrong,” she tells him softly, reaching out between them and laying a gentle hand on his arm, “and always have been wrong. You are a good man, even though you’ve tried hard not to be—even though you don’t believe that you are. I have seen it.”

“I—can’t,” he admits, and even he isn’t quite sure whether he’s arguing against staying or her belief in him. “No matter how much I may want to.”

He looks down at her hand resting against the coarse fabric of his shirt, warmth blooming across the skin beneath her palm, and chokes back the helpless surge of longing within him.

“I can’t stay,” he says, and this time it comes out with more conviction, steady and certain. “I am and always will be a friend, to both of you, but I can’t stay and only observe in your happiness. I’m sorry.”

“Why not?” she asks, with her usual manner of seemingly innocent curiosity.

Once, perhaps, he would not have been able to give her an answer, but if this is truly to be the last conversation they ever have, he does not wish to leave it with any regrets. He carries enough with him as it is.

With effort, he pulls his gaze from her hand, forcing himself to meet her eyes.

“I seem to have made a habit out of never belonging anywhere, and I’m not bein’ funny, but if I stay here, I think it’ll be too much even for me.” He attempts a wry smile but she seems in no mood for his usual brand of humour. “I don’t want to leave you, but if staying means losing you a little bit more every day, then I’d rather cut my losses now, if that’s alright with you.”

“Kalila and dimna,” she murmurs, almost to herself.

“You’ve never called me that before,” he says, trying for a joke, “not even when you were really mad at me.”

Her lips quirk in response, not quite a smile but more than he could have hoped for under the circumstances.

“It is a night to tell the truth,” she explains, even as the rays of sun stream across the stone at her feet. “It may now be morning, but I suppose we can make an exception.”

She pauses, but he knows instinctively that he is not to speak—that she is only waiting to find the words of her own admission.

“I love Will, deeply,” she says eventually, with a faraway look in her eye, the words drawn from her soul. “Like the bird who flies thousands of miles to be with the one they love. He is good, and true, and—”

“Yeah, yeah, alrigh’, I get it,” he mutters, only to be pinned by the sudden intense weight of her gaze on him.

“—and yet, I also love _you_, Allan A Dale, fiercely. I knew it for certain the day you lost your brother—I knew your grief as my own and yet you still put all else aside to save another—but in truth I think it happened before that.” Her lips twitch into a small smile as if at the memory. “The first day we met, when you volunteered to join me and my fellow men in that cage in order to save us.”

“Oh,” he breathes, ragged. All this time, and it wasn’t just his own vain, greedy hope. “Still?”

“That is love,” she says simply, and he will not doubt it now.

A shift in the shadows across the room draws his attention, and he looks up to catch Will’s eye across the courtyard. Will looks at peace, properly and contentedly _home_. He could have looked that way in Scarborough, once. It is enough to see him so now.

Will returns his uncertain smile with his own certain one, moving around the fountain to join them. He presses Allan’s shoulder, fingers drifting a little down his arm as he moves to stand at Djaq’s side, leaving a lingering trail of warmth in their wake.

“Are you staying?” Will asks quietly, almost softly. The deep blues and greens of his tunic make his eyes shine even brighter.

“If you want me,” Allan returns, half challenge, half hope.

“I always have,” Will says, with a quick flash of a self-conscious smile. “Why do you think I agreed to go to Scarborough with you?”

Allan blinks in surprise, once, twice. “Right,” he manages. “Good. And I’m to believe you’ve forgiven me too?” At Will’s nod, he dares to ask, “Why? After all, I’ve given you the most reasons not to.” He knows Will understands what he is referring to.

“Because, in the end, you came back,” Will replies. “Both when I asked you to, and when we needed you the most.”

It shouldn’t be that simple, but, perhaps, it is. It stands to reason that the last person to forgive him would be himself.

“Then—yes,” Allan says, looking between them. Djaq clutches his hand between her own, her smile transforming into one of total peace. “I’ll stay.”

It would be foolish to give any other answer. Djaq has always seen him as the person he was and could be. Will has always seen him as the person he is. Between them, they know him.

Somehow, after all that has passed, he has found his way back to them, even if he had to cross half the world to come home.


End file.
